It is starting to feel like the story of Tony Romo's game against the 49ers is going to be one of those things that grows and grows until it becomes impossible to separate fact from fiction.
Seven or eight years from now, fathers will be telling their children about how Romo, bleeding from both eyes and missing a leg, led the Cowboys to an overtime victory while simultaneously balancing the budget and bringing peace to the Middle East. We're not trying to downplay what Romo actually accomplished last Sunday, but we're drawing awfully close to the game with the Redskins and guys like DeMarco Murray are still building up Romo's performance in the last game.
"He could barely breathe," Murray said on KESN Wednesday. "We were just seeing him grunting, and when he was trying to talk, he was just kind of holding on. You could see it in his facial expressions that he was hurt."
Murray's comments leave us with a couple of thoughts.
The first is surprise that Romo was allowed back on the field. Romo had a broken rib and collapsed lung and the doctors were content to send him back out on the field after dosing him with a painkiller. Romo obviously didn't object, but there are rules in place to protect players from themselves if they suffer a concussion. If Romo was "just kind of holding on," it is hard to understand why there aren't the same kind of protocols in place for injuries that affect other parts of the body.
The second thought is that Romo has some pretty good teammates.
He got beaten up pretty badly in the wake of the Jets loss and it is hard not to feel like some of the tributes to Romo are a way for his teammates to beat back the criticism of their leader. That's really nice to see and it is obviously better than hearing grumbling about Romo, but it does lead to a feeling that the Cowboys doth protest too much.
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Again, this isn't a knock on Romo. What he did Sunday would have been impressive if he was 100 percent healthy. There just comes a point where it feels like everything is being laid on a bit too thick in an attempt to change another narrative that had already been blown way out of proportion.
